Inner burning
by HonoraryCullen
Summary: Jane and Alec have powers. Powers that could only have been brewed during dark dark times....
1. Chapter 1

_I could feel their dirty rough hands tugging and pulling at me as I struggled to get out of their fearfully tight grip, their grunts causing a crease of fright to form on my brow. If I were a giant, if I were naught but a young girl in the mercy of their hands, I would crush them. Them and their 'logic'. Since when were witches at all logical? Whores of the devil? Satan's sluts? More like a reason for a burning. Staring into the eyes of one of my captures, searching for a hint of sorrow, a near-faded glimmer of compassion, my hope vanished like the snuffing of a candle. It was Dick Barrowman. Once upon a happier time he had been my families neighbour, a dearly loved one at that. Alec and I would play with his daughter Hailey and his dear hound while his wife and our mother sipped tea and exchanged pleasantries. Our father and Dick would be at the inn, drinking ale heartily and merrily slapping upon each other's backs. If this contented life were to be allowed to continue, I would not be where I am now, I would still be playing, my mother indoors and my father out. Can such happiness's even exist? Of course they can't. Not in a world such as this._

_Hailey, Alec and I remained friends right through to our teenage years. I was fifteen when my father announced that I was betrothed, betrothed to Robert Johnson. I couldn't believe my ears, I had to be dreaming. He was a duke, a dashing duke at that, and would be about to make me duchess! The rejoicing was never-ending in the household, and I grew ever fonder of Robert over the coming months. He would leave roses at the house, an assortment of red and white that had been handpicked form the gardens of the home we would soon live in. A great Manor standing proudly on the edge of the village. When we visited it I remember admiring how handsome the vast drive was, lined with oak trees and fresh green grass. I couldn't think of a more perfect future, and was still waiting to wake up. Don't worry though, I did wake up. Or rather, I was jerked awake._

_It still pains me to think of, but I won't ever forget the day when I decided to ask my driver to escort me to the Manor house, I wanted to inspect that it was tidy and everything was in order before my future husband and I were to move in. My excitement increased as I got closer to the bedroom, the room I wanted most to be at a level of utter perfection. I ran my fingers along to smooth silky wooden banister as I ascended the grand stairs, but suddenly stopped dead in my tracks, a floorboard complaining as I did so. There were sounds. A light squeaking and mumbling coming from ahead. Cautiously, I proceeded on light feet, and gently pushed the bedroom door open enough for my eye to have decent view. There on the grand four poster bed, was my fiancé and my best friend. Hailey and Robert were passionately entwined, their bodies pressed against one another, kissing hard. My eyes went from wide with shock to narrowed, such anger shot through my bones as I had never experienced before, and I focussed all my energy on the girl I now so fervently hated. Suddenly, she screamed, her body doubling up and fingers curling into claws, nails tearing down her back as her arms wrapped themselves tightly around her torso._


	2. Chapter 2

"_Hailey?!" Robert cried, only to look over and see my fiery presence in the doorway. He abandoned Hailey to grope for his clothes while she writhed in apparent agony, her pain causing banshee like yells to bubble from her poisoned mouth. I glimpsed Robert for just a moment, and I cracked, feeling a sudden wash of embarrassment and heartbreak spill over me. As these feelings began to dilute my searing rage, Hailey's screams began to fade with it. Curled and shaking slightly, a whimpering Hailey whispered through chattering teeth: "Mother said he was right for me. I never meant to hurt you."_

_I had heard enough. Swiftly, I spun on my heel, the black cloak I wore swirling round and billowing out behind me. My tears marred the grand stairs that I fled so rapidly down, and I don't even remember the long gravelled drive that I tore to the bottom of. None of it mattered anymore._

_My driver was waiting obediently for me down at the gates. _

"_Miss, there was a man of long blonde hair and a red and black cloak saying he was wishing to speak with you..."_

"_If he returns wish him good day and tell him I will not speak. Take me home." I instructed, my voice shaking as I tried to keep what little shreds of dignity I still possessed. I had no heart to speak to strangers of now. _

_Once through the door of the back entrance to our house, I had run up the back stairs and burst into Alec's room. His bewildered expression at my sudden interruption caused him to ask no questions as I threw myself into his arms, longing for some form of comfort. He hugged me like only a twin brother can until my hysterics had died down enough for me to explain what I had just seen._

"_And all she could say was that her mother thought he was right for her!" I sobbed, burying my face into the hollow of his shoulder. I could feel Alec's fingers coiling around in anger against me; this would affect him as well as me. Once Robert's parents had passed on, his huge inheritance would have stabilized our family comfortably for the rest of our lives, and this prospect was now lost. As well as that, Alec does love me and hated to see me upset, let alone broken down into piteous sobs. _

"_When I see Hailey..." Alec trailed off, stroking my hair._

_Merely a day later, my parents were aware of the situation, and I was refusing to leave the solitude of my room. I sat upon the window seat, my chin resting upon my bony knees, my long wavy blonde hair spread carelessly around my shoulders, eyes staring out into the carefree countryside. I heard sudden raised voices coming closer to my room, approaching my resting place. The heavy door burst open, and in burst a stomping and near hysterical Margaret – Hailey's mother – closely followed by my brother._


	3. Chapter 3

"_HOW could you kill my daughter?!!" Margaret screamed at me, her arm stretched out across Alec to hold him back in a patronising way. Hailey was dead? "I go to the house to check up on her, and she's shaking like she's in the snow!"_

_I would have thought that Hailey would calm down a bit since I'd left..._

"_-but oh no, Robert told me everything you WITCH!" With that, she lunged at me._

_I leapt from my tranquil place on the window seat, and began backing myself into the wall, but I stopped dead in my tracks. Margaret's face had gone blank, like she had left this world and entered another, and Alec was looming over her, boring into her eyes._

_Shocked, I stood silently still, waiting for Margaret to snap from her apparent trance. Upon instinct, I approached my brother and put a hand on his shoulder. His gaze immediately shifted, and Margaret gasped, staggering and clutching my bedpost for support. _

"_This is why Robert would have been better for Hailey," she muttered under her breathe. "Robert wouldn't have gained a pair of disturbed murderers for family-"_

_The anger in my gut swelled up again, a beast roaring in my very chest, fire churning around it and spurring it on as I took a step towards her. Margaret collapsed into frenzied screams, crumpling to the floor and tearing at her dress. The pain she experienced was like a drug. It was enough to stop the pain for now, but I knew it would come crawling back when I was through with her, whatever through was. I had no idea what was happening, only that it felt good and satisfying, and there was no-one stopping me._

_It was now Alec's turn to shake me from my torturous escapade. _

_Margaret stopped writhing, and slumped to the floor, momentarily unconscious._

"_You shouldn't have done that..." Alec murmured, scooping down over the woman who immediately woke and scuttled upright to a standing position._

_Alec and I stepped cautiously away from her as she began to raise a violently shaking hand to point a scrawny index finger. Only two words left her lips._

"_Devils children." _

_And then she ran. _

_No more than a few days passed, when we heard news of Margaret's death._

_The doctor later informed me that her last words were complaining that there was a "pain beyond pains. Like 1000 knives were stabbing her, like she was dipped in burning oil, but not a scratch did pierce her skin." It was a heart attack that finished her._

_In such cases of tragedy, only one method of evil can explain. Witchcraft. _

_Now, the men's heated breath caused clouds of mist to form in front of their faces, like smoke breathed heavily from a hateful dragon, before disappearing into nothingness. That was what would become of me. _

_Once Margaret's body was resting alongside of her daughter's, Dick was distraught and livid._

"_How else would you explain it?!" He yelled to my father. "Your children, those things have never been right. A pair of Satan's own! Well, you will PAY for this wrong you have done me!"_

_My father had pleaded for him to be reasonable, so rash he was being. _

"_What are you trying to suggest?!" My father called back to him, mother crying desperately in the corner._

"_Your nymphs murdered my wife and child. Justice will be served; you can mark that one Gregory!"_

_With that, he had swept from our household into the night. We tried to run, packed what little we needed and made a break for it, but Dick was prepared for us. Men were stationed around the village walls and cut off our path, our one last reason to be hopeful._

_Presently, my parents had vanished, taken by some of the men, and Alec and I were being dragged mercilessly to the village cells._

_The smell wafting around us was sickening, twas of dying folk and rats and muck. _

"_This'll accommodate you nicely witchy," Dick breathed in my ear, his hot breath creeping down my neck. Thrown inside head first, everything turned black._


	4. Chapter 4

_I knew I was conscious when I felt a throbbing pain ricocheting around my head. _

"_Alec?" I murmured. I tried to push myself up, but the pain caused me to reel and lie down again, eyes tightly shut to block out whatever madness surrounded me._

"_Next door," an echoed voice replied, "You see my hand?"_

_Slowly, I lifted my eyelids to see a blurred hand waving through the bars at the edge of my cell. It was already dirty, but I recognised the nibbled nails. I nudged it lightly with my foot in acknowledgment, and he drew it back in to his confinement._

"_I think last year's holiday in that cottage in Pembrokeshire was better." He stated, his feet scuffing on the floor as if he were standing up. How could he make jokes now? In a crisis like this?_

"_Shut up Alec," I grumbled, attempting to insert venom into my tone, but not quite finding the strength to. Steadily, I sat up, and upon looking around my dark and dank cell, my head went to my hands. The skin felt strange against my face, like when putting on a silken scarf covered in grit. Already I was becoming a jail dog._

"_How long have we been here?" I asked, eyeing the bars of my prison with disdain._

"_Who knows, it's always dark in here so there's no way of telling what the time of day is." He replied, and I could now see his shadow in the flickering torchlight leaning against the wall separating us. How insane it was, to go from a perfectly comfortable lifestyle with everything I could possibly want, to becoming the lowest of the low. All in a matter of days. I shunted over to the wall that Alec leaned on, and rested my aching back against the cold grime, willing this to all be a bad dream..._

_My head snapped up as I heard the echoing of quiet footsteps approaching, and I shuffled to the bars of the cell, taking a cool bar in each hand and pushing my eye in between them. Once I'd caught sight of the intruder, I immediately pushed myself backwards as far as I would go, and sank down into the filthy corner._

_I heard Alec's voice next door to me._

"_Leave."_

"_Not until I have seen her," came the reply, and I shook my lengthy hair into my face to cover it. He would not see the dirt that had surely collected on my fragile features. "Jane?"_

"_Leave me Robert, just leave me."_

"_Look, the things you did to Hailey...that's not natural. You put a spell on me, I know it, I never _really_ loved you, I couldn't have, you're a sorceress..." he babbled, and he continued on with his excuses while I squatted, resigned in the corner, willing him to depart. "-and who knows what could have happened if I stayed with you-"_

_And then I leapt up. Robert started, and backed into the wall behind him. It was then my turn to jump, as a clocked figure appeared at Roberts side out of thin air. _


	5. Chapter 5

_Robert flinched as a hand rested on his shoulder._

"_Off you go now," a man's voice merely said, and Robert was away like lightening._

_I froze, staring at the figure who then turned to Alec and lifted his hood down. He was quite young, with blonde hair and very handsome features, but extremely pale. _

"_Were you the one whom came looking for me but spoke to my driver?" I asked, moving closer again to the bars._

_The man stepped back to look at me. His eyes were a beautiful honey colour, and I immediately trusted them. _

"_No," he answered musically, "that was Caius. My name is Doctor Carlisle Cullen, but there is no time for explanations and introductions." Carlisle moved out of sight as he went again towards Alec. "You're too young to die my boy, I'm here to offer a solution for you and your sister."_

_My ears pricked. A solution? I began to fear this beautiful man; a solution to death was not earthly, not natural..._

"_Give it to me Doctor," Alec replied eagerly, and I scowled._

_I pressed myself further against the bars, trying desperately to see Alec._

"_Who are you?" I asked desperately. "Neither of us are witches or sorcerers, if you're thinking of casting magic or performing voodoo or something, we're out!" _

_The Doctor chuckled a little, shaking his head._

"_I am no conjurer, but I can offer you a life beyond this one. A life like mine."_

"_And what exactly are you?" Alec asked quietly._

"_Vampire."_

_My blood froze. This stranger, out of absolutely nowhere was telling us we could escape with our lives by becoming vampires. _

"_And what is your gain?" Alec didn't seem to be backing off the idea, and I couldn't let him do this alone. If it meant getting away from this place, I would take his offer._

"_My colleague has seen possible talents in both of you and would like to see you once the change is complete."_

_There was silence in the near empty jail, stony as the walls that caved over us._

"_I'm in." Alec said, and this was followed by a loud snap of metal._

"_What's going on?!" I called, straining my neck._

"_How did you break the bars?!" Alec asked, clearly in awe and amazement._

_I reached my hand through and felt over to Alec's cell, not finding any form of confinement. I could hear mutterings next door, a few "You're sure about this? No going back....eternal life...2 – 3 days of fire..." and none of it made sense to me._

"_See you in the next life Jane," I heard Alec call to me._

"_Alec?!" I shrieked, but my scream was drowned out by his sudden screams._

_I began hyperventilating, and wishing this figure had never come._

"_What are you doing to my brother?! LET HIM GO!" I began to cry as Alec's bellows got worse and worse in the cell next to me._

_*_

_It could have been an hour, a day, or a week that passed, but Alec's screams seem to continue forever. I didn't sleep a wink, and the whole time I saw neither Alec nor Carlisle emerge, until Alec's bellows ceased._

"_Alec?" I whispered timidly. There was no response."Alec what's happened to you?"_

_There was a sudden crack, like two heavy objects colliding, and then I heard a voice, spoken from a mouth I recognised, but a tongue I did not._

"_Let me go, I need blood _now_,"._

_I was stunned._

"_Not her," Carlisle was saying, "She's your sister, not her."_

_He wanted to drink my blood?! Oh what had we done. I heard the crash of Alec's door, and then all was silent._

"_Hello?" I called. Nothing. "HELLO?!" Merely an echo. I was abandoned in this stinking jail, left to rot by a beautiful stranger and my now vampire brother. What else could possibly bring me any lower? I felt so cold and lost and alone, my insides felt like bursting and screaming for someone to notice me, someone to care, someone just to know that I existed down here in this tomb._


End file.
